Letter: The ‘Godless’ Constitution

Tuesday

Sep 3, 2013 at 6:44 PM

In Mr. Southmayd’s Aug. 22 letter he suggests reading the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence to support his claim that the conscience and moral fiber of the United States are founded on the god of Christianity, thereby justifying the courthouse signs “In God We Trust.”

To the Editor:

In Mr. Southmayd’s Aug. 22 letter he suggests reading the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence to support his claim that the conscience and moral fiber of the United States are founded on the god of Christianity, thereby justifying the courthouse signs “In God We Trust.” But nowhere in these three documents is Christianity mentioned, and nowhere in the first two, which stand as the legal foundation for the United States is any sort of god mentioned at all.

The remote deistic being obliquely referenced in the Declaration, which has no bearing on our laws, is simply not the personal, interfering god of the Christian tradition. Moreover, the version of the treaty of Tripoli that was unanimously passed by Congress in 1797 and signed into law by John Adams, explicitly states that “the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”

The major thrust of Mr. Southmayd’s letter seems to be that if a person is in the majority, he has the right to impose his religion on the minority. This may be a Christian doctrine, but it has no basis in America’s founding documents, which recognize the individual’s freedom to define his own personal creed. The principle of majority rule applies to choosing how government should function; it does not apply to gratuitous imposition of religious belief on others by that majority.